by Ian Mayfield
‘What about the flute?’ Lucky said.
‘Ah, yes, the flute.’ He looked at her. ‘The flute of course is decidedly not mundane, and for this we are thankful. It seems he was a bit rattled by Mr Pegley donating his bodily fluids to the cause of forensic science. In a manner of speaking it’s his bad luck it wasn’t some mass-produced Japanese instrument. My guess is he realised this later, and dumped it on Pegley to get rid of, figuring he’d be too scared to shop him if he got caught.’
‘No honour among pervs,’ Sandra Jones said.
‘Any questions?’
‘What bothers me,’ Sandra came back, ‘is why take Pegley along at all? From what I can see he seems to have done fine on his own apart from that one time.’
The DI shrugged. ‘To show off?’ he suggested. ‘Pegley didn’t go into that part of it.’
‘And we still don’t know who this other accomplice was,’ Nina said.
‘You’re talking about Denise Cole?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That one sounds like an older man,’ Zoltan said. ‘It’s the earliest we know about, so possibly Bayliss was the apprentice there. Could be Denise disturbed them, and because she was a bit of all right Bayliss decided to have some fun.’
A phone rang. Helen picked it up. ‘Special Crime, Helen Wallace.’
‘The older man doesn’t feature in any of the other incidents,’ Sophia said.
‘Hardly surprising,’ Sandra commented.
‘Denise’s statement did say he seemed disturbed by what Bayliss was doing, yes.’
Sandra said, ‘Isn’t it worth pursuing? If this bloke’s a known villain, maybe he’s tried using it as a bargaining chip at some point. Long shot, I know.’
‘Good thinking, all the same,’ Sophia said. ‘Lucky, d’you fancy getting on the wires again, see if - ?’
‘Oh, no!’ Helen Wallace exclaimed into the phone, much louder than she’d intended. Everyone stared at her. Her face wore a strained expression. She listened, nodded and said, ‘OK, then. Come in when you can. Bye.’
She hung up. Sophia said, ‘Jasmin?’
‘Yeah.’ Helen’s lips were pursed. ‘In private, guv. It’s not funny.’
‘Why’re you laughing, then?’ Sandra demanded.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘What’s it worth?’ Sandra said, her eyes with a predatory gleam as Helen struggled to keep the corners of her mouth down.
She was aware of banging, of voices, in what seemed to be a fitful abstract dream. A sudden upwards leap of consciousness, prompted perhaps by a particularly loud bang, made her aware of people close by. Someone was speaking in a strange language. No - English, but fragmented, almost pidgin. There was another voice, deeper and more authoritative. ‘Who is it, the old boy?’ More unintelligible gabble. The banging restarted. ‘Hello? You all right in there?’
Jasmin opened her eyes, then screwed them shut again as light stabbed in. Warily she parted her lids halfway. She could see linoleum, a door; the knocking and the voices must originate on the other side. She had no idea where she was. She decided to open the door and find out. She tried to stand up.
Nothing happened.
Her heart leapt against her chest in panic. She tried again. She realised she was very cold. She was conscious of the commands to move being issued by her brain, but her legs would not respond. She could feel them attached to her body like slabs of frozen, lifeless meat. Something was horribly wrong.
She got a grip and woke up. Look at this sensibly. Slowly she pried open her memory. She recalled signing out just after six, and being at home without remembering how she’d got there. She remembered her despair that sleep had again deserted her, and how she’d sat watching TV half the evening, unable to get her head round anything more challenging. From what her stomach was telling her, it didn’t seem as though she’d eaten.
Finally, after News at Ten, she’d gone along to the bathroom, deciding maybe the ritual of getting ready for bed would do the trick. It was the last thing she remembered.
This in mind, she took stock of her surroundings. She was still in the bathroom. Relief flooded through her. She would not, after all, be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
But she’d better say something before her housemates broke the door down.
‘Mark?’
‘Jasmin? That you in there?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she answered sheepishly. ‘My legs are numb. I fell asleep sitting on the toilet.’
‘What?’ Mark broke off as the Thai student muttered something. ‘Can you reach the door to unlock it?’
‘I will try.’
Legs, when they don’t work, are heavy. Jasmin slid off the seat and plummeted to the floor with a crash that knocked the wind out of her. Tears of anger and mortification welled in her eyes. Sweeping up the shreds of her dignity, she managed to wriggle over to the door and, with a quick check to make sure she had her nightie on, reach up to draw the bolt.
As she submitted to Mark and Thien carrying her back to her room, the first pangs of returning circulation shot like period pains through her pelvis and down her thighs. In a way, it was worse than being numb.
Jeff Wetherby already felt as if he’d been kicked by a horse, and Sophia’s walking into the office the moment he gave up and answered her persistently ringing phone didn’t do much to improve his mood.
‘Guv.’ Hand over the receiver, he tried not to glare at her. ‘Nottingham on the line.’ She nodded and took the phone from him. He returned to his desk, still brooding. He caught Marie Kirtland’s eye. ‘Jasmin OK?’ he asked, trying to sound casual. ‘Took her coffee, she nearly bit my head off.’
‘You not heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘It’s a classic,’ Sandra, who was passing, said.
‘Tell me.’
Struggling to suppress a smirk, Sandra told him. He smiled, but she could see in his eyes he didn’t find it the least bit funny. She exchanged glances with Marie. Miserable bugger. There was always one.
There was no prophetic dream, no sudden flash of inspiration or intuition. Nina had been right; what was bothering her would occur to her sooner or later. Now, without any detectable method of arrival, the knowledge was in her head. Kim Oliver sat bolt upright and looked across at Marie.
‘Ain’t got a magnifying glass, have you, by any chance?’
‘No.’ Marie frowned. ‘Why should I have a magnifying glass? I’m not Sherlock Holmes.’
But Kim was already at the notice board, peering at the Polaroid of the blood-drenched Debbie Clarke. There it was, plain as day. It wasn’t wishful thinking.
She called Nina over. ‘Did Sophia say where she was going?’
‘Coleridge’s office,’ Nina said. ‘Not sure how long for.’
‘Never mind. Least we know she’s in the building.’ Kim tapped the photo triumphantly. ‘I’ve cracked it.’
‘That thing that was nagging you?’
‘Look at her right arm.’
Nina peered. ‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘It moved.’
‘Not camera shake, or you’d get a double image,’ Kim insisted. ‘It’s blurred. Her arm moved as the picture was taken.’
‘You mean - ’
‘I mean she ain’t dead,’ Kim declared, loudly, causing several of the others to stop what they were doing and come over to have a look. ‘Least she wasn’t at that precise moment.’
‘Hang on,’ Nina said. ‘It might just’ve slipped.’
‘No. See where the right arm’s draped across her middle? If it was gonna slip, it’d slip down, right? But the blurred edge is at the bottom. She moved it up.’
‘God help her,’ Anne White said, ‘if she was still alive then. I mean look at her. The wounds, the blood...’
‘Not just alive,’ Marie Kirtland said. ‘Conscious.’
‘How d’you mean?’ Kim asked.
‘No funny remarks,’ Marie said, ‘but if you were lying there starkers and somebod
y suddenly pointed a camera at you, what would you do?’
‘Try and cover myself,’ Nina said.
‘That’s why her arm moved. She’s got a newspaper over her fanny, so that’s OK, but her tits are exposed. She’s trying to cover ‘em up.’
‘Yeah, but how’s any of that possible,’ Lucky said, ‘with those sort of injuries? Even if you’re still alive, you’re not gonna be able to twitch an eyelid, never mind - ’
‘I think I can make a guess at the answer to that,’ a voice said.
As a body, they turned. Sophia, grim-faced, was standing behind them. A glance from her sent them shuffling back to their desks.
‘Everyone’s attention, please,’ she called out for the benefit of those few who hadn’t been distracted by the commotion. They all stopped work and listened. ‘I’m not sure whether this counts as good news or bad. I’ve just been on the phone to the forensic lab. They’ve got the DNA result on the epithelials and the blood from the bed. The epithelials are Debbie Clarke’s, or at least some of them are.’
She hesitated. She looked angry, or embarrassed, or something. With their guv’nor it was hard to tell. They waited.
‘The blood isn’t,’ she said.
Friday
Ideally, Anne White would have spent her last day fitted with wing mirrors. There’d been rumours a stunt might be pulled - and from past experience that was a certainty, not a possibility - but she couldn’t be sure when. Her colleagues were quite capable of keeping her in agonies until Barkeley’s tomorrow night. In an attempt to force their hand she’d taken half a day’s leave, and would be on her way after that whether they were ready or not.
Their morning’s work seemed to have taken most of the team out of the office, chasing halfway promising leads on the whereabouts of Debbie Clarke or her squatter friends. Only Lucky, head down at her desk, and Helen, talking to a social worker, were left. Eventually even the social worker disappeared, and the clock crept nearer to one-thirty: zero hour.
Perhaps the suspense, the emotion of leaving, heightened her sensibilities but the self-contained industry of the others, the almost silent emptiness of the office, now seemed oppressive, and the tedium of clearing her desk, making notes on unfinished cases for handing on to other members of the team, made her impatient. Her head snapped up at the ringing of the phone. It was Bob Price, one of the uniformed sergeants.
‘Anne,’ he said. ‘Got a prisoner down here says he wants to talk to you.’
She groaned. ‘Who?’
‘He won’t say. No ID on him.’
‘Got a lot on at the moment, sarge.’
‘I dunno about that,’ Bob said, ‘but it’d make my life a lot easier if you could come down and put a name to the face.’
She thought for a moment. ‘What’s he in for?’
‘Flashing,’ Bob said. ‘He’s in the cells now. Can you imagine, exposing yourself to a shop assistant in Ann Summers? Frightened the life out of her. Won’t tell us why, just keeps asking for you. A right arsehole, if ever I saw one.’
‘OK, I’ll come down,’ she sighed, hanging up and mentally kissing goodbye to the last chance of getting her Special Crime affairs in order. She flicked through her memory for likely candidates. A few possibilities, but this one’s MO was taking it a bit far. She paused on her way out and took a long look round at what might well be her last view of Special Crime as one of its staff.
Helen and Lucky exchanged glances as the door closed behind her.
‘Cell six,’ Bob said, unclipping his keys and selecting the appropriate one before handing them to her. ‘You know the procedure. Check the Judas hole first, anything looks iffy or you can’t see him, come and get me.’
‘Right.’ Anne nodded and set off down the corridor. It was cool down here after the heat of the office, for which she was eternally grateful. In warm weather, the uneasy truce between a police cell block’s two pervading smells of disinfectant and vomit was frequently broken, with invariably the same winner. She remembered well her first such experience as a young probationer, and her subsequent undignified flight to the ladies’, pursued by the laughter of male colleagues.
But she’d encountered far more stomach-churning situations in the years since, and nowadays the most unpleasant things in cells tended to be their occupants. Starting next week, she wouldn’t even have to put up with prisoners any more.
One for the road, she thought with a wry smile, advancing down the rows of heavy doors. Most were open, unoccupied, and the cell block was quiet, the calm before the inevitable Friday night flood of brawlers and piss artists. Number six, at the far end, was shut. She stood before it, composed her opening line, and slid open the Judas hole.
A nightmare vision filled the opening. What might have been a face was just two pale, hairy half moons, separated by a hellish dark maw, which lunged at her retinas like a bad trip. She yelled, slammed the hole shut and recoiled so fast she lost her balance and fell backwards through the open door of the cell opposite. ‘Bastards!’ she squeaked, sitting up. Through the door of number six came the sound of helpless laughter.
She scrambled to her feet and went back out into the corridor. Bob Price was standing at the other end, hands in his pockets.
‘Told you we had an arsehole in there,’ he said, and walked off.
She mustered what she hoped was some semblance of composure and went to unlock number six. Ranged along the bench were Kim Oliver, Marie Kirtland, Nina Tyminski, several uniforms from early turn and, triumphantly clutching an iPhone with a voice memo app, Sandra Jones. To one side were Jeff Wetherby and Zoltan. Both their trousers were in place but it had to have been one of them. At the sight of her they burst into renewed fits of giggling. ‘Bastards!’ she spluttered again.
In reply, Sandra played the voice memo back, and she heard herself scream, clear as a bell.
Blushing furiously, she pointed an accusing finger. ‘I take it this was your idea?’
Sandra shook her head and indicated Zoltan, who took a step back, cradling his fingers. ‘All my own work,’ he admitted. ‘With help.’ Beside him Jeff grinned and tried to cover his face with one hand.
Torn between anger at Zoltan and being a good sport, Anne stood pouting for a long moment. Finally she wagged an ominous finger at her lover and erstwhile DI.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said.
The Assistant Commissioner had been keen to administer a bollocking to Sophia for, in his words, wasting time and resources chasing wild geese in and out of homeless shelters instead of waiting for the DNA result, and for full effect he had chosen to do so in person as opposed to over the phone. At their meeting, Sophia had refrained from asking him why dragging her all the way to Brixton just so he could see what she looked like standing on his office carpet was not a waste of time and resources, partly because the less she said the less likely he would be not to take the investigation away from them, and partly by a desire to curtail the ear-bending so that she could get back to Croydon by half past one if at all possible. It was one-fifteen when she finally made it. Anne was still in the office, but looking eager to get away. She made apologetic noises about the unfinished nature of her paperwork. Sophia waved them away with a rare smile, and rang down to the CAD room to ask them to put out a PA announcement, a presentation to be made to DC Anne White in the Special Crime office, all welcome.
‘You don’t mind hanging around a few minutes longer, I hope?’
‘Course not, guv,’ Anne said uncertainly.
Ten minutes later the room was filled with a noisy crowd. Most of the team were present, as far as Sophia could make out, as well as twenty or so other people from uniform, CID and the civilian staff. She fancied they were harbouring some joke; certainly a lot of them were avoiding eye contact. Chuckling to herself, she put the matter aside. In due course she’d hear on the jungle drums about whatever stunt had been pulled to mark Anne’s departure.
Sentiment not being her strong point, she called everyone to attenti
on and gave a brief, unembellished but, she hoped, sincere address expressing the team’s regard and appreciation for Anne’s work over the past six months, their best wishes for her future. Anne blushed crimson throughout this and the subsequent applause. Finally Sophia slid open the bottom drawer of her desk and, to cheers and whistles, took out a large Ann Summers carrier bag.
‘Don’t need to ask who did the shopping, do I?’ Anne said, trying to suppress her embarrassment.
Sophia blinked. She hadn’t expected the bag, but then she supposed you were asking for it by letting Sandra Jones spend the money from the whip round and leave the stuff in your drawer.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sandra called out from a safe distance, ‘it’s not all from there.’
‘Should hope not,’ someone said. ‘She’ll be knackered.’
The first item Anne unwrapped was an alluring lacy confection in appropriate navy blue, for which she gushed thanks but refused firmly a chorus of male pleas to model it for them. The other presents were more conventional: a Harrods gift card (‘I’m going straight up to town to spend this’), Glenfiddich, chocolates and an exercise DVD (‘Which you’ll need,’ Marie said, ‘sitting on your arse behind a desk instead of pounding pavements’). The card, supplied and inscribed in best blue ink by Chief Superintendent Coleridge, was suitably vast, and crammed with several dozen messages ranging from the banal to the heartfelt, from the humorous to the downright obscene.